crusade against enemies of the faith. "God's
standard-bearer," he called himself. How
ironic that this lowborn prophet of a revolu
tionary age would thwart his chivalric
dream of a lifetime-to sit on Constantine's
throne in a reconquered Constantinople.
At Worms, Luther was asked two ques
tions. Were these his books? And was he
ready to revoke the heresies they contained?
To the first he replied: They were his. The
second required time to consider.
At 6 p.m. the following day Luther was
led into a larger, torchlit room packed to suf
focation with the empire's notables. To dis
own some of his books would be to condemn
simple Christian morality, Luther said. In
others, though he apologized for the vehe
mence of his attacks, he could not deny that
Rome and its canon law had enslaved Chris
tians, body and soul, lest he open his coun
trymen to further oppression.
Dark eyes flashing, voice clear and
strong, he ended with ringing defiance: "Un
less proved wrong by Scripture and plain
reason. . . my conscience is captive to the
Word of God. I cannot and will not recant.
.
God help me. Amen." Here he stood.
Being Luther, he could do no other.
The next morning Charles rendered his
decision: "I am descended from a long line of
Christian emperors. .
.
.
a single friar who
goes counter to all Christianity for a thou
sand years must be wrong .. . I will have no
more to do with him."
Other business took over, and the edict
outlawing Luther in the empire was not is
sued until May 26, long after Luther had de
parted homeward under safe-conduct.
WHY DIDN'T Charles burn this ex
communicated heretic and stamp
out Luther's Reformation in its
weak early stages? I put this ques
tion to a scholar working on Charles V's
letters in Constance, where Jan Hus was
burned despite an imperial safe-conduct.
"He didn't want to stain his knightly hon
or, and he had a lot of pots bubbling on the
stove," Professor Horst Rabe told me. "The
Protestant matter usually had to take a back
burner to crises in Italy or Spain, or to the
Turkish threat."
At Worms, Luther's life had hung in the
balance of Charles's chivalry. Now he was
an outlaw, and his life hung on a ruse. On his
return from Worms, he vanished. Rumors
spread he had been slain. "0 God, if Luther
is dead," lamented the artist Direr, "who
will explain to us the Gospel?"
High in the Thuringian Forest I sought
out the spot where Luther's wagon was set
upon by horsemen. In a mock abduction
Luther (foresightedly grabbing Greek and
Hebrew Scriptures) was spirited off to the
Wartburg, a castle commanding a ridge
over Eisenach and a superb sweep of fell and
forest. Here, tonsure grown out into unruly
dark hair, disguised as a bearded squire
Junker Georg-Luther lived ten months
alone with God and the devil under the
protective custody of Frederick the Wise.
"Did Luther actually throw an inkwell at
the devil?" I was discussing the castle's best
known legend with its director, Werner
Noth. Luther's Bible lay open on a table in
Luther's room, which looks out over sylvan
serenity toward the formidable border with
West Germany. Relic hunters carried off the
original, splinter by splinter, like fragments
of the True Cross. A 16th-century table from
ancestral Mohra replaces it.
"Luther drove himself hard," Noth told
me. "He wrote 14 works here. He was work
ing at a feverish pace on his New Testament,
which he translated from Erasmus's Greek
in an incredibly short 11 weeks. He was frus
trated, lonely, often sick, anxious as an out
law. In his 50 letters, he mentions being
troubled by evil spirits. Yes, the inkwell epi
sode is entirely possible. Why not? People
throw vases at walls today."
Disquieting news from Wittenberg in
truded on Luther's solitude. Reformers were
pushing ahead at a reckless pace. "Good
Lord!" Luther wrote. "Will our people at
Wittenberg give wives even to the monks?
They will not push a wife on me!"
Frederick sent word that "so many sects
arose among them that everybody was at sea
and none knew who was the cook and who
the ladle." But that Luther should not risk
his life by returning.
Trusting in "a far higher protection" than
the sword, Luther boldly mounted the pul
pit in Wittenberg's Town Church and held
forth for a week until he had turned the
raging torrent of religious revolt. How rash
to smash images, strip away comforting
The World of Luther
449